SVFIG
Next Meeting:
Saturday, July 28th
at
Cogswell College
1175 Bordeaux Dr.
Rooms 197A and 197B
Sunnyvale, CA  94089


If you would like to have meeting announcements e-mailed to you, send the message Subscribe SVFIG Meeting Agenda to: George Perry

Wireless Internet access is anticipated (though not guaranteed) at Cogswell, so bring your wi-fi enabled laptop.

Security

When attending SVFIG meetings, please be aware that Cogswell College now locks its doors on weekends. To gain entry to the building, there will be an SVFIG member stationed at the door from 9:45am to 10:15am to admit recognized SVFIG meeting attendees. If you are attending an SVFIG meeting for the first time, please bring along a printout of this agenda to identify your interest in Forth and gain admission. If you arrive after 10:15am, there will be a telephone number posted for you to call to alert someone of your presence at the door. The front door will also be checked at intervals of 20 to 30 minutes to accommodate those without cellphones.

Do not under any circumstances let any strangers enter Cogswell. Those who are authorized admittance have key-cards.

July Meeting Agenda


  • 09:45 --- Coffee and a Chat
  • 10:00 --- An E-mail Strategy for Home Users and Small Businesses --- Masa Kasahara
    "My e-mail saga: What options do we have?"
  • 10:30 --- Linux, Xen, and Fedora 7 --- John E. Harbold
    "As you know, desktop computers are getting more and more powerful, such that they now can run several virtual operating systems at once. One of these programs is called Xen. You will be able to run more than one operating system at a time, suspend and resume, or migrate to another machine. Nice! I'll also talk about WIFI for Linux and the niceties of Fedora 7."
  • Noon --- Lunch
    Some folks bring their lunch, some folks go to Togos.
  • 13:30 --- Introductions, Announcements, Rumors, and Random Access
  • 14:00 --- FEFFF, A Refactored P16 --- Don Roberts
    "I finally found enough excuses to start building my own Forth engine. Using Ting's P16 as the starting point, I refactored the RTL architecture and instruction set in consideration of FPGA characteristics. The ALU uses only a few percent of a $25 Spartan chip, and all memory is on-chip. Synthesized from behavioral VHDL, simulation indicates a clock speed of about 40 MHz."

    Don now has his Forth engine implemented and he's started testing it in an FPGA.
  • 15:30 --- Break
  • 15:45 --- Discussion of presentation ideas for the August SVFIG meeting
    Bring your speaker and topic suggestions. This means you!
  • 16:00 --- Adjorn

How you can help SVFIG:

  • Bring your speaker and topic suggestions to every meeting!
  • Your input for November's Forth Day is always welcomed.

Coming to SVFIG in August (hopefully):

  • WAV file and Soundcard I/O Software using Win32Forth - Andy Korsak
    This software has been written for amateur radio applications. Andy has suggested that it might be useful to look at his code in advance of his talk. Contributions to this work-in-progress would be welcomed. You can download and view his sound card software on the Win32Forth group (membership required), or here.

Please register your interest for these topics:

  • The world's second Babbage Engine is coming to town. Maybe we can have a meeting at the Computer History Museum to have a look.
  • Review and discussion of recent postings on news:comp.lang.forth
  • Review and discussion of interesting Forth projects and many files at the Yahoo Win32Forth Group

Off the table:

  • There has been a lack of interest for a presentation by a representative from Gumstix.
  • There has been no success in contacting the author of Propeller Forth - written locally by Cliff L. Biffle
  • A tour of TechShop in Menlo Park is not planned at this time. If you would like to visit the facility, please make your own arrangements. Check out their talks, events, and instructional classes.

If you have anything you'd like to talk about in July or August,
please contact Kevin Appert.

Meeting Notes